


Beware of Dragons

by entanglednow



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alcohol, Dragons, M/M, Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-10
Updated: 2012-06-10
Packaged: 2017-11-07 19:17:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony is going to kill Thor, he doesn't care if the guy's functionally immortal, he has resources, he'll find a way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beware of Dragons

The first thing Tony does when he wakes up is realise what a bad idea that was. The second thing he does is make a loud and unhappy noise, which he regrets immediately, because his mouth is too close to his ears. There is a lot of pain involved, and that just wakes up the rest of him. He knows opening his eyes isn't going to make it better, but he does it anyway. His eyeballs can hear everything, it's a very disturbing sensation. He has to lay very still for a minute just to make absolutely certain his head is still attached to his spine and not in fact impaled on some sort of torture device.

He knows exactly what to blame his misery on as well. The shiny, quicksilver liquid Thor had cheerfully handed him last night. The one that had come in a two inch thick, acid-proof bottle. Thor had given a booming laugh and the sort of friendly one-armed hug that should probably have dislocated Tony's spine.

"I'm going to kill Thor," Tony decides. He doesn't even care if the guy's functionally immortal, he has resources, he'll find a way. He will find a way to bludgeon Thor to death.

"You mentioned that last night."

The floating voice, which sounds a lot like a disembodied Bruce Banner, comes from his left - he attempts to move his head in that general direction without it splitting down the middle. Whether he succeeds or not is still up for debate.

Bruce is a blurry, purple-ish shape, closer than Tony's expecting. He's pulled one of the expensive chairs over to the side of his bed, and really any night where someone has to make sure you don't die in your sleep is probably one that didn't go well for you. He's also holding a steaming mug, and peering at Tony over the top of his glasses. He doesn't look as though he spent the night drinking suspicious liquids and making bad decisions, because Bruce is the designated driver. He does look like he spent the night rolling around on the floor, but he always looks a little bit like that. Even when there's no danger of Hulk his clothes always look as if they're on the verge of falling off of him, in a dejected sort of way. Bruce is like an unhappy clothes horse. Which is a shame because Tony thinks Bruce would look good in clothes which hadn't already lost the will to live.

"I still can't believe you didn't think to ask him if it was toxic to humans?" Bruce says - and Tony thinks the low volume of his voice is for his benefit.

He tries to move his arms, and they obey his commands only through supreme force of effort and stubborn persistence.

"When he said that the shiny silver stuff was made from the tears of dragons I thought he was joking, no one would drink dragon tears. Why the fuck would anyone drink dragon tears? _Who_ would drink dragon tears?" Saying it doesn't make it sound any more real.

He can see Bruce's mouth shifting to form the explanation Thor had given last night.

"Don't you dare say elves," Tony says. "I don't want to live in a world where the sensible answer to anything is elves."

"Well technically they're aliens - I think they just look like elves." Bruce makes it sound like a compromise, when it's really not.

Tony scowls at him, in a way that he hopes conveys all of that. Screw space elves and their liquor, seriously. His body hasn't felt like this in the morning for years. He's woken up in the hospital feeling better than this. He awkwardly leans over far enough to steal the mug Bruce is drinking out of - only to discover that it isn't coffee but some sort of horrible... _concoction_ instead. But it's hot and it goes some way to burning the taste of death - or sad dragons - off the flat of his tongue.

"This is disgusting." He finishes it anyway, then drops the empty mug on the carpet, it won't matter much because the room - the room's kind of a state actually. "Why is there a crack in the window? Those things are supposed to be crack-proof, or crack-resistant - something that means I should definitely get my money back." He waves a hand to make sure the crack doesn't actually exist across his own eyeball. Thank god it doesn't, he probably couldn't handle having cracks in his eyeballs this morning.

"The windows made you sad because you could see through them," Bruce says, like that explains everything - and it probably does. Tony's done crazier and more destructive things on a whim. Come to think of it, he does vaguely remember some sort of sad rant about holographic windows - trying to work out how not to fall through them...or something to that effect.

"Did I try to -"

"Yes," Bruce says before he even finishes. Which is never a good sign. It could just be a lucky guess, but him and Bruce both have a history of doing things under the influence of science.

"But you wouldn't let me operate heavy machinery."

Bruce picks up his mug, leaves it to drip the remains of its unidentified contents against an ugly but expensive lamp. Tony doesn't even know why he has that lamp. It looks like a penis.

"You tried to feed it a sandwich, I thought it best to cut the romance short."

Tony does vaguely remember trying to give the suit a sandwich. It had looked so hungry with its strange, flat mouth, or at least he'd thought so at the time. He should probably stop anthropomorphizing his technology, because it always gets confusing once he's drunk. There are a lot of bits and pieces in his head that sort of make sense. There are also bits and pieces which he really hopes he made up, or hallucinated.

"Someone broke the elevator. But then I fixed it."

"You didn't fix it." Bruce says. "You just told everyone you did. And you're the one who broke it."

"And then on the roof with Thor - did that actually happen?"

Bruce nods again. "Yes."

"You didn't think to stop me?"

"I thought about it," Bruce admits. Which is more evidence why they absolutely needed to be friends.

"Do you think Thor knew I was joking?"

"Almost certainly not," Bruce says immediately.

"Crap." That could come back to bite him on the ass later. He's pretty sure a dragon wouldn't fit in the tower. "So what happened after that?"

"Then you threw up." Bruce has the insane calm of someone who remembers everything. Oh, the terrible power that comes with being the designated driver.

"Yeah, that's pretty much where my brain stops being hazy and confused and turns into a yawning chasm of 'fucked if I know,'" Tony admits. "I hesitate to ask that you fill in the blanks."

Bruce doesn't normally get to fill in the blanks. Usually he's the one looking disheveled and wondering what the hell he did this time. Even if he is smart enough to not touch alcohol made from the bodily fluids of mythological animals. Tony would like to think he's smart enough too. He'd thought Thor was joking after all. But he has a nagging feeling that if someone had offered him some before yesterday, he'd have been all 'yes, dragon tears, pour me a glass of that.'

"You spent a few hours after that laying on the floor refusing to move, you said you had terrible vertigo. Then you started hallucinating, and then you tried to take your clothes off because you thought that would make it better."

"Which I clearly succeeded in doing, because I'm wearing much less than I remember." Tony's wearing nothing, as it happens, he'd noticed that.

Bruce sighs, and pushes thumb and finger up under his glasses to rub his eyes. "It's complicated," he admits. Which is Bruce Banner speak for 'I really don't want to talk about this.' It's the sort of opening Tony would take full and terrible advantage of - but it does bring up another question.

"Is there audio and/or visual evidence of my descent into dragon-based insanity?"

"There was," Bruce says carefully. "But now there isn't. And I took your phone when you started trying to call people."

This is why Bruce is his favourite.

"This is why you're my favourite," Tony tells him, because he thinks he should know.

"Which is also why I stuck around, in case you decided you absolutely had to get through the window. That and to make sure you didn't choke to death in your sleep." Bruce makes it sound like Tony might have done it on purpose just to annoy everyone. Which is the sort of shit Bruce wasn't going to let him get away with. Everyone else is fired. Tony loves Bruce. Bruce is now in charge of _everything_.

"I owe you for saving me from an ignominious dragon-related death."

"Yes you do." Bruce crosses his arms. "You drooled, all night, it was very unattractive."

"Please just tell everyone that we had sex instead." Tony drags the pillow from the other side of the bed and carefully forms it into a wedge shape around his head. "Tell everyone we had sex, at least twice, and it was amazing."

Bruce just looks at him over the top of his glasses. Anyone else would be radiating disapproval, Bruce is radiating - mild frustration? Some sort of long-suffering acceptance? Amusement?

"Am I supposed to announce it to everyone straight away, or do you want me to casually bring it up in conversation?"

Tony thinks about it for a minute. The first option would be entertaining to watch, it's very tempting to try and watch Bruce pull that off.

"You can wait for the right opening if you like, ease into it, mention how devastatingly handsome I was in my semi-inebriated state."

"Semi?" Bruce frowns like they remember the night very differently.

Tony ignores him.

"You found it impossible to resist me -"

"Before or after you threw up?" Bruce asks, and he's not smiling but there's the possibility of a smile somewhere in his mouth.

Tony glares at him. "Make up something appropriately adventurous and obscene. It doesn't matter what, I guarantee nothing you say will surprise anyone. Tell them there were tigers, and someone got arrested. It was awesome."

"I'm not sure I can use the word 'awesome' in a way that's convincing." Bruce is doing a very good job of looking apologetic.

"No, you absolutely have to use the word 'awesome,'" Tony insists. "My honor demands it."

"I thought I'd already taken care of your honor...twice."

Tony is so glad Bruce is paying attention, he would be insulted by the lack of enthusiasm, but he's enjoying the conversation far too much.

"The rest of my honor. I have a reputation to maintain, or to disgrace, I can never remember. Besides, everyone already knows that when I'm drunk I'll sleep with anything."

Tony's pretty sure there was a better way to phrase that. Bruce just gives him a look, sort of scrunched on one side, and it's not even offended. Which is kind of awful. Tony feels even worse - he hadn't even known there was worse, he'd thought he'd already reached a plateau of worse.

"Which was in no way meant to imply that I wouldn't sleep with you sober, or not hungover, or when I have complete control of all my own limbs and am not under the influence of dragons. I would. Any time really. You're awesome."

"Good save," Bruce says, with the sort of oddly flat amusement that's meant to be reassuring, but Tony knows him well enough to not be reassured. He'll fix that later, because Bruce is the best.

The semi-awkward silence is interrupted by his phone. It's sort of muffled and far away - and he has no idea where it is. Until Bruce reaches a hand into his pocket and yes, of course, Bruce took it, that would be his phone. He sets it down on the bed. The phone is just a huge blur, a huge, loud blur. The dragon tears have sent him _blind_.

Tony reaches a hand out and draws the glasses off Bruce's nose, he makes a face at him but doesn't try and stop him. Tony manages - through trial and error - to only poke himself in the eye twice before he gets them on. They don't help a lot, but at least the blur is bigger, and he's good at translating large blurs into things which make actual sense.

Yeah. He's not answering that.

Tony manages to roll over onto his back, which isn't exactly better, but it isn't worse either. The phone ends up somewhere on his stomach. He's pretty sure it's going to vibrate again in a minute, which will probably make him throw up...again.

"I'm going to need so many cups of coffee to deal with today - Bruce, tell me you'll be on coffee duty until I relearn how to walk."

Bruce sighs and levers himself out of the chair, and Tony is really going to owe him for this. Something complicated and terrifying and _sexy_ , that will make all other science weep with jealousy - and possibly arousal.

"I'm going to tell everyone you didn't live up to expectations," Bruce decides.

Which is - what?

"Bruce, don't be cruel. You wouldn't do that. Why would you do that?"

Bruce moves the chair to back where it had been originally. "I'm gonna say that you were actually pretty disappointing, and you fell asleep half way through." He shakes his head, in a way that looks far too serious to be real. But that doesn't mean Bruce wouldn't. Tony tries and fails to catch him before he's out of reach, because Bruce can be a ninja when he wants to be. The door is much too far away and Tony can't reach it from the bed.

He thinks he's sliding off the bed?

"Bruce - Bruce I thought we were friends?"

Definitely sliding, and the carpet is not as soft as it looks.

 

 


End file.
